Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be too thorough. I was replacing the
piston and liner in the #4 hole from my stupid bout with pump gas, and
naturally the figure eight gasket got hosed so I had to pull both 3 & 4
liners, then some bits of gasket crud fell into the cam follower trunk, so
I decided to pull all the little buggers and inspect them while I cleaned
them. Seven look fine, one is dished. Damn. If I hadn't looked it would
have been okay till the end of the season.
So now I'm thinking, I have one more race in the season (two if I do the
Maryhill Hillclimb instead of running an SCCA race in the Radical), the
cam lobe looks kind of rounded and will ultimately need to be reground.
But which way is it likely to fail sooner--if I put in a new follower, or
stick the dished one back in?
It's not grooved, it's smoothly dished, which means it's been rotating. I
wonder what a new, flat follower will do to the slightly rounded cam nose.
So, in true junkyard dog fashion, what do you think will last better
through the remaining race weekend. I think I just made my mind up about
the hillclimb. I was going to run the Radical because I thought it might
be the critical race to win the DSR Northwest Regional championship, but
it looks like I have a lock on it anyway. But towing all the way to
Maryhill with an iffy engine is a bit silly when I could screw my back up
doing high-G turns right here in Portland.
By the way, on a happier note I took my new 360 Spider to PIR for a
Ferrari track day on Monday. I now have 407 miles on it, and 72 are on the
track. I was being gentle for awhile but the service manager for the
Ferrari shop said "stand on it--that's what it's for, just don't stay
above 7000 for long." So I did. Wahoo. It's not a race car, but it slides
through the corners like one. I did a couple of 1:33's with the chicane
in, which is respectable for PIR (Peyote does 1:31--1:32). With some more
revs I could have gotten down a shade more. I put some racin' tunes in the
CD player and cranked the music up.
Made me want to put a stereo into Peyote.
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